Awards and Recognition

Three Cornell engineering research teams have been chosen as recipients of AI and Climate Fast Grants, to explore strategies to reduce energy use in AI industries and to integrate AI in environmental research.

• The Green Choice: Enabling Sustainable Generative AI through Flexible System Co-Design, led by Udit Gupta, assistant professor.

• AI-powered confidence in additive construction, led by Sriramya Nair, assistant professor, and Nils Napp, assistant professor.

• AI-enabled robotic eDNA sampling of waterways, led by Kirstin Petersen, associate professor.

Grace Barcheck, assistant professor, and Riley Culberg, assistant professor, have received an award from the NSF Arctic Natural Sciences program to conduct a field study of how hydrology beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet changes through the summer.

Three Cornell Engineering faculty members are part of the 2025-26 Engaged Faculty Fellows cohort. The Faculty Fellows in Engaged Learning include Jonathan Jaramillo, lecturer, and Kate Reiter, assistant director of student project teams, Undergraduate Programs. This year’s Faculty Fellows in Engaged Scholarship include Lauren Stulgis, Swanson Director of Student Project Teams, Dean’s Office, Undergraduate Programs.

Fengqi You, the Roxanne E. and Michael J. Zak Professor in Energy Systems Engineering, had his paper on AI-driven rational design of promiscuous and selective plastic-binding peptides featured with art on the inside front cover of Chemical Science.

Lara A. Estroff, the Herbert Fisk Johnson Professor of Industrial Chemistry, has been named a 2026 Materials Research Society (MRS) Fellow, one of the most selective honors awarded by the society. Estroff is recognized for her influential contributions to bio-inspired materials synthesis, including advancing the understanding of biomineralization and crystal growth mechanisms, as well as for her impactful academic leadership within the materials community.

Huili Grace Xing, the William L. Quackenbush Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and of Materials Science and Engineering, is the recipient of the 2025 University Research Award in Technology from the Semiconductor Industry Association and Semiconductor Research Corporation.

Fengqi You, the Roxanne E. and Michael J. Zak Professor in Energy Systems Engineering, had his paper on a technological, economic, and ecological systems approach to sustainable agrivoltaics development featured with art on the front cover of ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering.

Lingxiao Shao, postdoctoral associate in Alex Kwan’s lab, received the Peter and Patricia Gruber International Research Award in Neuroscience from the Society of Neuroscience.

A Cornell research project, led by Eilyan Bitar, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, exploring how electric vehicles (EVs) can serve as a flexible, dispatchable network of mobile energy storage to strengthen and decarbonize the power grid is advancing with a $1.8 million grant from the Bezos Earth Fund.

Iwijn De Vlaminck, associate professor, has received a MERIT award from the National Institutes of Health. This prestigious and highly selective award will fund the De Vlaminck lab’s research on CD8+ T cell activation and development throughout early life and into adulthood.